Is there a way to visually distinguish user messages from AI replies in the Chat panel?

Support Help
1

Hi all,
I’ve noticed that in Cursor’s Chat panel, my prompts and the AI’s responses look quite similar, which makes it a bit hard to scan conversations quickly—especially in long threads.

Before I submit a feature request, I wanted to check:

Does Cursor already support any built-in way (e.g., setting, theme, or extension) to make user messages more visually distinct from AI replies?
Has anyone found a reliable workaround (e.g., via Markdown, custom styling, or other means) to improve this distinction?
I’m not looking for full UI customization—just clearer default visual separation (like different background shading, alignment, or font emphasis) would help a lot.

Thanks in advance!

2

There isn’t a way to change it other than switching between light/dark mode. In dark mode there’s a light gray background for your prompts, so at least from a scan perspective there’s contrast your eyes can lock onto.

4

Found a way (valid as of July 8, 2026): in VS Code Settings JSON, apply the following setting

{
// ...
    "workbench.colorCustomizations": {
        "input.background": "#4f4b42"
    }
}

Note that this is not the exact color to be shown in UI. This color will be blended.

How to find this theme token (in case the setting is broken in future updates)

  • From command palette, Toggle Developer Tools
  • Find a human message container
  • Notice the CSS class is composer-human-message, and the style is background-color: color-mix(in srgb, var(--vscode-input-background) 90%, #282828);
  • Notice the CSS var with “vscode” name prefix. Then from command palette, Generate Color Theme from Current Settings. There is also the input.background token
  • That’s how you know which UI token to override in VSCode setting